Note: additions are being made after the cut and edits are stricken.
If you're not familiar with the work of Dr. Peter Watts, you really should be. His degrees in marine ecophysiology aside, he is also a sci-fi author of some talent and is best known for releasing his novels under a Creative Commons license in addition to having them published through Tor, among them Starfish and the mind-bending transhumanist novel Blindsight, which will certainly make you reconsider what you think about how you think. His work is well known by the science fiction fandom for taking hard SF in …
Earlier today, Lyssa and I arranged to reserve a couple of tables just behind the dance floor at The State Theatre in Fairfax to have dinner and catch a double-header concert which we and the usual suspects been anxiously awaiting since October. Amanda Palmer returned to NOVA, performing with and backed by the Nervous Cabaret out of Brooklyn, New York. Lyssa and I arrived first, following a madcap search for parking which Lyssa could comfortably walk from and a few last-minute arrangements earlier today. A generous soul at the front of the line let Lyssa (who is still on crutches …
This has been in the works for a while but it’s been made official by Sean Kennedy and Cimmerian of Rantmedia: the first Rantmeets, monthly gatherings of fans of Rant Radio, their original media projects, and the antics of Sean and Cim will begin in September, the first being held around the world this upcoming Friday, 4 September 2009. Every month thereafter Rantmeets will be held on the first Friday of every month.
The first Rantmeet in northern Virginia will be held at Stacy’s Coffee Parlor in Falls Church at 1800 EST5EDT (6:00pm). I don’t have …
While talking with Lori-Beth at Spellbound last weekend she brought up something that had been bumping around in the back of my head for a while, which was that northern Virginia and Washington, DC had some great club nights for older folks - Spellbound, Midnight, Umlaut, what have you - but nothing for the younger folks who aren't of legal age (regardless of whether or not they want to drink). These days, it's harder to sneak into clubs when you're still in high school because most every club really does check ID these days. Not that I'd know or anything...
Last year I wrote about the theatrical release of the Death Note films in the United States for limited engagements. Much to my surprise, Viz Pictures is bringing the third movie in the series, entitled L: Change the World to the silver screen for two days only, the 29th and 30th of April. The evening of the 29th they'll be showing the subtitled version of the movie, and on the 30th they'll be showing the dubbed version of the movie (probably with most of the cast of Bleach providing the English voices). Showtime is at 1930 hours (7:30pm) local …
Saturday, 24 January 2009 Main Auditorium 10:00am Welcome and introductions 10:30am Plenary: "The RepRap Project" by Zach Hoeken Smith, Director, RepRap Research Foundation 11:15am RepRap Technology Overview from Local RepRap Builders 11:45am Activities Outline by R. Mark Adams 12:00pm Break for Lunch 1:00pm Build the Cartesian Robot with Zach Hoeken Smith
HacDC Workshop 1:00pm Assemble the RepRap Electronics 1:00pm Learn to Solder Breakout with MAKE:DC's Adam Koeppel 2:00pm Arduino Basics Breakout with HacDC's R. Mark Adams 3:00pm …
Maintenance on Leandra is finished. I took her offline around 2100 ESET5EDT on Saturday night to remove a dead DVD-ROM drive, remove a pair of 512GB memory modules that weren't doing anything, and swap out her 250 GB hard drive for a 500 GB drive. The RAID array has had 250 GB added to it; specifically, the logical volume holding everything but the /boot and / partitions has had 250 GB added to it. 15 GB from the free pool was added to /usr (so that more software could potentially be installed) and the rest of the free disk space was …
On 24 and 25 January 2008, HacDC, a hacker space located in Washington, DC will be holding a RepRap build-a-thon in conjunction with the Baltimore RepRap User's Group. The build-a-thon starts at 10:00am EST5EDT on Saturday and will run until 3:00pm EST5EDT Sunday.
The RepRap is an open source rapid prototyper which is unusual in two ways: first, it is affordable for the home hobbyist to both construct and operate (typically, it costs $500us to build a RepRap from scrach, compared to the $49,000+ that industrial rapid prototypers cost). Second, the RepRap is capable …
This past weekend was the annual autumn celebration over at Hasufin and Mika's place, a get-together in which we get together to enjoy the coming of fall.. or whatever passes for it in the DC metroplex. Unlike Pennsylvania, in which Halloween costumes are often designed with wet weather insulation in mind, autumn doesn't actually arrive until the final week of October or therabouts. It tends to stay pretty warm down here right up until the end.
In other words, temperatures in the 70's and 80's right up until Samhain, which is usually in the neighborhood of thirty degrees Fahrenheit, where …
